Student Union President senior Grace Egbo passed an executive order to formally create SU task forces Oct. 16, four days after the Constitutional Council deemed them unconstitutional.

The Constitutional Council’s judgment followed an anonymous SU senator’s request for the council to interpret the validity of five recently implemented task forces. Egbo’s executive order allows SU’s task forces to continue to function and requires SU presidential approval for the creation of all new task forces.

According to Egbo, Constitutional Council decided that tasks forces were unconstitutional because the creation and deployment of task forces is not explicitly stated in the SU Constitution. Egbo explained that in the Constitution, there are only two ways in which a task force can be formally created.

“Task forces can only be formally created by either the Projects Chair in Senate or by the SU president,” Egbo said. “Looking more at the process of how [they were] actually created, [Constitutional Council] realized it was unconstitutional.”

Prior to the passage of Egbo’s executive order, Senate had created a student experience task force, mental health task force, racial identity task force and socioeconomic diversity task force. She passed the executive order to formally recognize those task forces.

“I…wanted to give them that flexibility to really keep that original spirit of what the task forces had in mind, so [I] just created it in a more formalized manner,” Egbo said.

According to Egbo, formalizing the task forces illustrates SU’s progress in their Improve Wash. U. Campaign.

“When that Improve Wash. U. Campaign was set out towards the end of last semester, it was really just an idea as to what should Student Union be putting more focus towards,” Egbo said. “Having people serve on these task forces, it shows that we are really on track to reach the goal that we did set for ourselves to really try to improve the overall student experience on campus in whatever facets that looks like.”

In the opinion by Constitutional Council, Chief Justice senior Jack Broitman called upon the Senate to be more objective with its operations. Broitman declined to comment for this article.

“I worry about the variation between different Senates, the subjectivity of certain rules and the lack of accountability for internal procedures outside those explicitly defined in the Constitution and Statutes,” Broitman wrote in the opinion. “To ensure a more concrete sense of continuity and accountability within the legislature of Student Union, I would strongly recommend that each house create and maintain a set of internal rules.”

SU Speaker junior Olivia Williams believes the oversight provided by Constitutional Council plays an important role in the functionality of Student Union.

“I think oftentimes it’s inconvenient if we have oversight or no one to hold us accountable, that can lead to a lot of grey area,” Williams said. “I would say that I think sometimes it can be difficult for [Constitutional] Council though, because…they have to draw the line out to what is concrete and what is true and sometimes people don’t always agree. But in terms of their role in Student Union, I think it is important.”